John Wayne Smith

I believe, like the founders of our great country, that the only purpose of government at all levels is to ensure the life, liberty, and property of all individuals within its borders.

For a society to maintain it's freedom, it's government MUST remain transparent. Everything the government of the county does must be readily available to the citizens it governs. If elected, I will work towards using the internet as one of the primary means of communication with government. The current Bay County website is only a one way point of information: The county posts the information on the site and that is the end of it. We should have a website that users could log on to and write comments on any piece of information that is posted by the county. It could include individual blogs for members of government to be able to address the people, as well as a section for comments to their statements. It could also have a section of the website with an editable Wiki for current laws and upcoming legislation that people can comment and suggest changes. All of this software is already available as open-source, which means it is tested, reliable, and most importantly, free!

I believe that the right to property is an essential part of living in a free society. Your property is an extension of your life. As American founder James Madison once said: "The right to property is rooted in the right we have to the free use of our own mind and talents, which it is government’s job to protect."

Every county commission meeting, code enforcement presents to the commissioners "nuisance abatements on properties". These are usually given to the commission with recommendations to mow the lawn of remove an object from the property and leave a "bill" for the owner. If the owner does not abide to the command of the county, he will face more fines and ultimately imprisonment. I believe that your property is YOUR property. If John is doing something that Matt doesn't approve of, Matt's first reaction should not be to use the strong arm of government to force john into submission.

I am a proponent of doing what is right, not what is popular and that is why I oppose the county's focus on victimless crimes rather than cracking down on legitamate, violent and property crimes. The purpose of having a justice system in a free society is to provide restitution to the victims of crime. When there is no victim, you are simply imposing tyranny on an act that you see unfit in society. An exceptional chunk of the sheriff department's budget is spent on investigating drug crimes instead of legitamate crimes.

It is necessary to remain competitive in the market place; if we do not then our economy will suffer from it. People will say that we need to “go green” or we will kill the planet. I do not have anything against going green, but I do have something against our economy suffering for no good reason. You see, while we may force our people to go green we do not force others to do so world wide, so what happens. Well, as history has shown, companies move overseas where they are not straddled with the forced taxes and forced innovations. This means that money is taken away from our economy and put into someone else’s. To top that off, since the new innovations are not required in the other countries the “green effect” is nullified as the same gases are still being generated, just in a different place.

Carbon taxing, cap and trade etc are all ruses to bring about socialistic change in this country under the guise of safety, wellness and humanitarian needs. It is all a sham unless you make the same requirements throughout the entire planet. Otherwise, again, the same amount of gases will still be created – just in a different place. The same amount of pollution and problems will still be on the planet – just in a different place. So it is not really an issue for us to handle alone now is it?

Perhaps the real question is: Why would the government of the greatest country in the world want to kill its own economy? Every time regulations become so stringent upon our manufacturers it becomes easier for them to move away rather then work under the extraordinary burden placed on them by our government. This removes jobs from our economy thus turning us into a consumption driven economy rather then a production economy.

Any one who knows anything about money will tell you that if you use more money then you make you will eventually go broke. If our economy stops producing things of value and simply consumes everything, we will go broke. You don’t think our current economic situation happened by itself do you?

People cannot possibly think that these booms and busts in our economy happen on their own. It is painfully obvious that an economy manipulated by governmental regulations will never grow properly. We should have learned this lesson from the “Great Depression” era. Apparently we have not and somehow even today people are unwilling to do what is right and look for more regulation that will surely destroy us even further.

There should not be any of these regulations on our companies. Each company should be allowed to pursue the most economically feasible course to maximize efficiency and produce the best product possible at the cheapest cost possible. This will increase competition, drive down consumer costs, put more people to work and return this country to its production roots.

Any company having the means to chase a “green” should be free to do so. This will also increase competition and make other companies follow suit when they see people purchasing “green” over their products. There is a big difference between a company voluntarily going green and being forced to go green or get fined. When push comes to shove, people will always take the path of least resistance, companies will do the same.

It would do well for governments to learn more about the economy and how it runs rather then try to bend the outcome to its own will through regulations. Regulations, like all laws, only apply to those law abiding citizens. If the law does not apply to them they won’t listen to it. Making regulations here in this country does not stop other countries from doing anything, it only adds to the burden of our companies. Thus decreasing our companies ability to find viable economical solutions, increasing prices (since the company needs to recoup the new costs) or driving companies out of business in this country.

The more regulations you have, the more tyrannical the government and the less free companies are to do business. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When people are faced with bullies in the school yard what do they do? Most will go somewhere else to escape the bully, some will fight. Of the fighters, those who cannot stand on their own will loose and succumb, those who are smart enough to get together and face down the bully in mass have a chance to win and those who do beat the bully manage to get things changed.

If people and companies want change they will need to stand up and say something or do something about it. When people stand up in mass against our bully government things will change. Until then, the bully will continue to run around the school yard doing whatever it pleases.

Now here is a touchy subject, especially for a state that has so many retirees on Medicare and limited incomes. Most people think that this system needs to be overhauled when in fact it doesn’t; it simply needs to get the government out of the business to begin with. Without government interference you will have increased competition and decreased costs.

With the government involved there is little to no competition and prices will rise as they always do with monopolized industries. Private business cannot compete against a government who can raise any amount of money it wants at will through taxes. Since there is no competition and an unlimited ability to acquire funds, prices will rise as doctors’ charge more for less services.

There is nothing wrong with a single payer system so long as 100% of the people get 100% of the coverage at 100% of the facilities 100% of the time. If this perfection in the system came to pass then it would be fine. We all know that perfection cannot be reached. Competition allows for this imperfection to exist and people getting what they can afford. When the government is involved you may have the benefit of subsidized health care costs – but – that is all you get.

The lines will be come longer, the services will become less, the innovation will disappear, and the cures will be slow in coming. There will be no incentive to increase efficiency since there is no competition to increase rewards. If you want better drugs, more effective cures etc you will need to allow private medical industries to thrive on their own.

The choice of what cure to use should be between the patient and the doctor. This includes the use of experimental procedures. With government involvement, all of that will disappear. The government will tell the doctor what he can and cannot offer. Anything outside of that will not be allowed in the country. Then this country will face the same thing other countries with socialized medicine right now.

As it stands, people from other countries come here when their government controlled health services do not allow for a timely intervention. When we institute a national health care system people from this country will go to other countries where the restrictions are not so burdensome and a cure can be found at a reasonable cost.

For many years the democrats have been trying to get into the health care system. All those years they have been crying about how bad it is for people without insurance, yet, those same people are still here today. They have been saying that without the government help these people will not get services, yet, they are still here in good health. Do not be fooled. Everything the government does ends up hurting the people it claims to help.

The government already has two health care systems in place now, Medicare and Medicaid. These are designed to help the poor and elderly (the same people who don’t have private insurance right now). Both these systems are a failure as they are both out of money and unable to keep up with the current demands. If the government has failed in both of these endeavors, even though they had nearly half a century to get it right, what makes anyone think this new system will be any better.

When the government says it will NOT increase taxes, then says you will pay a tax penalty if you don’t get insurance, how is that not increasing your taxes. If you cannot afford health insurance already, how is taking your money via tax penalties helping you make more money to afford insurance?

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We have seen the mistake; we have witness the utter collapse of government at work in the health industry. We should learn from the past 50 years and get the government out of the health care business so that it can thrive on its own.

The public school system has been failing for some time now. A recent World News Daily pool indicates that barely half the populace believes schools are providing the right education. Only 29 percent said they think schools are teaching appropriate classes and 50 percent say they think schools are broaching subjects where they have no business teaching.

In as much as education should be a responsibility of the parent to ensure their children are educated enough to survive, it should be noted that the people of Florida made it clear they wanted the government to handle the job. Our constitution is changed by voters who add or change it according to what they want done. It was made clear that the people wanted the service for their children when they made the constitutional change for education.

Excerpted from the constitution in part, it says:

The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education and for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require.

It should be pointed out here that the people insisted the state provide for adequate education in uniform, efficient, safe, secure and FREE public schools. We all recognize that there is no free lunch. Regardless of what is said in the constitution. Someone has to pay for this service. Since the government does not produce anything that generates a profit and is solely a consumer, it must therefore acquire funds from someplace to fulfill the wishes of the people. It does so through the imposition of property taxes.

Now, many people are saying those taxes are too high and are becoming a huge burden in order to support them. To those people, there is only one thing that can be said, change the requirements of what you want or get rid of them altogether.

Government can only do that which its citizens say it can. Here is a perfect example of how government and citizens need to work together to accomplish a desired goal. It is a fine balance between the amount of taxes required and the services provided. Since the people made the request, they have the ability to remove that request. The government cannot do it. Pending the people standing up and telling the government what services to get rid of vs. which ones to keep, the government is obliged to provide all the services requested and needs to find a way to pay for them all.

The problem isn’t really that taxes are too high. It is that people have realized that they can vote for anything they want from the public trough without realizing the unintended consequence of cost. Now, when you see people complaining of such things, it is because they came to the realization that it is not free and they must pay for it, even if they do not use it. The choice is really easy, you can either decrease the demand for the government provided service or you can pony up whatever it costs. The government will be happy to oblige regardless of what the decision is.

This is NOT a government problem. The government is there, of, by and for the people. It is the people who have to make the choice. If they choose to take back the responsibility of educating their own children then the public school problem simply disappears. If the public school education system is not up to par with the citizens expectations, they simply need to remove it from the constitution, the government will do as it is asked, and allow private schooling to take over.

It has long been said that anything government touches is a waste of taxpayers money and that everything ends up hurting those whom it was originally intended to help. Such contentions do not fall on deaf ears even if people perceive it that way. The truth of the matter is multilayer and needs to be looked at carefully. You see, people want certain things from their government, when asked the government needs to find a way to pay for it and make it work.

When the call went out that our children needed to be educated, governments were asked to provide that education because not everyone could afford the cost of private schooling. Many parents wanted their children to have a better chance at life then themselves had and realized that such could only happen if the children were educated enough to make a difference. However, they could not afford to get their children an education and demanded the government solve that problem. Thus was born public schools.

We all know the bureaucracy behind the public school system and what it leads to today. Needless to say, the same type of bureaucracy is prevalent in EVERYTHING the government touches. The more government gets involved the more administrative needs have to be met, regardless of the institution. Being established for public use via the government means that everything not constitutionally based needs to be removed and/or mandated for safety. So things like the arguments of prayer at “public” functions, or gun control on “public” grounds, or police roving “public institutions” all come into play.

These “needs” do nothing but take away people’s freedoms, make the government officials in charge and increase the totalitarian aspect of a government over stepping its bounds. Then people get irate over what is looked at as government intrusions into their lives and the reverse cycle begins. Here however, starts the beginning crux of the problem. Once freedom and control is given away, rarely, if ever, is it ever returned to the people from whom it came. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

All persons control this, whether they accept that responsibility or not, is a totally different story. You see in today’s society the turn around from the cries of provision. The government of course does not want to the struggle between public and private rages on. The solution is not really as easy as people think it is.

Right away people will say, well get government out of the business to begin with and let the citizens pay into private institutions. This is all well and good, but what happens with those that cannot afford such. If we do this then we will be right back to things like people cannot afford school and the scream will go back out for government run schools again. Since the government has to handle both extreme classes of its citizens, what would be the correct answer?

There are now new looks into how these type of situations can be evaluated. Things like dropping the tax rate to a fix percentage and then using vouchers to help curb costs. For something like this to work it would necessitate that government interventions in the private sector are removed and only its influx of money will be used to off set costs with no strings attached. Thus, allowing the efficiency of a free market to thrive with the resources of passive income.

We can easily see that the private sector cannot do what the government can in as short a time as the government does because it is without the monies to accommodate such expenses over the long haul. Governments on the other hand, tax their citizens and pool the monies to accomplish their desired results. The problem arises that once instituted it becomes a quagmire of red tape that can become a nightmare for individuals. The unintended consequences of government involvement always return to hurt the people. To alleviate the situation the government should deregulate and sell off the institution, thereby decreasing the burden and intrusion into its citizen’s lives.

This is quite an interesting topic. It appears that most people do not understand what this really entails when it comes to government. They for sure understand it when it comes to their own wallet or pocketbook. They see what not having money does, what kind of problems they face when they don’t have the money in their accounts to pay the bills etc. They also understand what it means to be in debt, to pay interest on that debt etc. Somehow, all of that seems to get lost in the translation when it comes to the government.

Almost as if people think the government has a bottomless pit full of money that they can just reach into and pull out funds whenever necessary. This is of course is not true. By necessity, government is forced to tax its people because government produces nothing of value that will generate profits to cover its expenses. The government should be held accountable to balance its budget in the same manner that every one most balance their checkbooks. There should be no exceptions. If citizens can go to jail for writing bad checks they government should go to jail also.

What makes this topic so interesting is that the people themselves are in control of all this and none (or very few) actually realize it. You see, the government only does what the people tell it to. SO when the people say we need food stamps, the government says OK. They then increase its taxes to cover the costs. When the people say they want more schools and better teachers, the government says OK. They then increase its taxes to cover the costs. This cycle keeps going on and on for as many things as the people keep saying they need services.

The problem comes to a head when the pain of the taxes are so great that he people paying them for services they don’t use begin to stand up and make some noise. The baby that screams the loudest will get fed first and so, the people screaming about the taxes being too high will get some sort of concession to keep them quite and make them feel good. Once quite, then it is back to business as usual.

With the balancing act of services vs. taxes the government has its hands full. They have to provide all the services because people demand it and they have to figure out a way to pay for it all. Like anyone else, government doesn’t like noise. Any solution that keeps the services running without people screaming and hollering is a good solution to the government. That doesn’t necessarily make it right.

If and when the people figure out that the government is only doing what its people tell it to then will the people understand that they can decrease the demand on their government and thusly decrease the governments demand upon them. If that day never comes then the cycle will continue to escalate, the government will continue to raise taxes, people will continue to scream and the malcontent of the situation will rise to a breaking point.

Placing the straw that breaks the camels back in place will send the crappola to the fan. The fine balancing act will fail and everything will come crashing down around the citizenry. When that happens, people will pick up the pieces and learn not to rely on the government any longer. Of course, by then you will have two separate classes of people emerging. The ants who are smart enough to take care of themselves and their families will survive; the grasshoppers will either learn from the ants or perish.

The only way around it now is for the entire current grasshopper population relying on the government to learn from the current ants. If they do this, the cycle will break, the demand will become less and the straw will never be placed on the camels back. We will be safe. This of course means that the necessity of people to become self reliant will need to be taught. A new line of thinking will need to be in place and paradigm shifts will be required. Those shifts are what need to be in our schools right now. Without them we are doomed to repeat the historical failures of all governments before us.

Every “person” has rights. Those rights should not be infringed upon. I grant you that people can voluntarily give away those rights should they deem it prudent to do so. However, any right not given away remains in with and in the control of that “person”. ALL rights of a state stem from the people. That’s why we have a government of, by and for the people. The state cannot do anything the people do not give it permission to do. Unfortunately people seem to somehow have forgotten this fact.

In 1787 state representatives got together and created the Constitution. In the Constitution there were very specific powers given over from the state to the newly created federal government. Anything beyond that which is in the Constitution and exercised by the federal government is illegal. The Constitution is the highest law of the land and the entire federal government is subject to its restrictions. The amendment process was made excruciating on purpose so has to make it extremely difficult to allow the federal government to run ram shod over the people.

The tenth amendment very clearly leaves the federal government in the lurch of its boundaries. Enforcing the tenth amendment would be to keep the federal government honest by not allowing it to step outside its jurisdiction. The amendment undeniably confirms these restrictions when it declares that anything not expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution is reserved for the states and people respectively.

This means that if the people did not give the permission to the federal government to do certain things then that power does not reside with the government. It is up to the people to hold their government accountable for its actions. In legal terms, silence is acceptance. While the state takes what permissions it has been given and decides to push the envelope, the people’s silence of the states action is tantamount to giving them continuing permission to keep on doing what they are doing.

Today, many states in the union are “exercising” their states rights and speaking out. They are no longer being silent on the matter. They are now attempting to hold the federal government responsible for its actions. Florida is no exception in this manner. It is about time that Florida stands up and voices its opinion, it is about time Florida stops being silent and begins to protect itself from the unwanted intrusions of a federal government running amok and making slaves of its citizens. For instance there are several measures being discussed for the upcoming session that addresses this issue such as:

HM19: Affirms our 10th Amendment State Sovereignty as assured by the U.S. Constitution and demands that the Federal Government "cease and desist from going beyond the scope" of its Constitutional authority.

HB21: This is the "Firearms Freedom Act." It provides that firearms and ammunition manufactured in Florida for personal use will NOT be subject to federal law or regulation.

HJR37: "Healthcare Freedom Act" gives Florida the right to DECLINE participation in a nationalized healthcare system.

There is nowhere in the Constitution that provides the federal government permission to do any of this with in the Florida Republic. Like all parents, we have to teach our children what is right or wrong. Our children will push the envelope to the very brink, and possibly beyond if we allow it. After all, silence is acceptance and they will always say “well you didn’t say I couldn’t do that”. Children derive their power and morals of what is right and wrong from their parents. Government, being the child of the people does the same thing. It is time that we has parents of the government teach our public servant children what is right or wrong, what they can get away with, what they can’t get away with and deliver punish them where it is required to make them understand what they did wrong.

We should NOT be silent any longer. The people have been tolerant enough of their government’s behavior but now it is time to put a stop to it all. Every citizen has a job to do when it comes to the government. They should no longer be silent; they should stand up and let their voices be heard. They should scream at the top of their lungs if necessary. Each and every citizen is supposed to hold their government accountable. It is now time to exercise that right.